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JX 
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MORISON 


ISTHMIAN  CANAL 


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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


The  Isthmian  Canal 


A  LKCTURK 


BY 


MR.  GEORGE  5.  M0RI50N 

Member  Isthmian  Canal  Commission 


BEFORE  THE 

contemporary  club  bridgeport.  conn. 

May  2o,  1902 


JX 
THE  ISTHMIAN  CANAL. 


A  Lecture  by  Mr.  George  S.  Morison, 

Member  Isthmian  Canal  Commission, 
Before  the  Contemporary  Club,  Bridgeport,  Connecticut, 
May  20,  1902. 


5 


«^^        It  is  perhaps  a  very  unsatisfactory,  and  a  rather  appalling 
introduction  to  be  brought  before  you  as  one  who  knows  all  about 

^^  so  mooted  a  question  as  that  of  the  Isthmian  Canal.  I  will 
^  acknowledged  that  I  think  I  do  know  something  about  it,  but 
t  there  are  plenty  of  people  who  will  tell  you  I  do  not.  I  shall 
therefore  start  on  the  principle  that  I  do  know ;  and  I  trust,  with 

^    the  respect  which  I  have  no  dotibt  you  have  for  the  opinion  of 
your  president,  that  you  will  all  agree  with  me  in  what  I  say. 

This  is  the  third  time  which  I  have  recently  spoken  on  this 
particular  subject.  The  first  time  was  before  a  commercial  club, 
and  I  endeavored  then  to  describe  the  different  canal  routes, 
particularly  Panama  and  Nicaragua,  and  to  state  as  briefly  and 
as  plainly  as  I  could  their  physical  characteristics  and  their 
respective  merits.  The  second  time  I  spoke  to  a  reform  club, 
and  as  reformers  are  not  supposed  to  deal  especially  with  com- 
mercial considerations  or  engineering  details,  I  spoke  then  of  the 
reasons  why  a  canal  should  be  built,  and  the  effect  which  an 
isthmian  canal  might  be  expected  to  have  in  furthering  the 
good  ends  which  it  is  supposed  reformers  intend  to  accomplish. 
I  do  not  exactly  understand  what  the  special  character  of  this 
club  is ;  but  in  one  respect  it  differs  radically  from  either  of  the 
others,  as  all  the  members  of  each  of  the  other  clubs  wore  black 
clothes.  I  must  therefore  on  this  occasion  take  up  the  subject 
in  a  rather  more  general  way,  and  speak  both  as  to  what  the  canal 
would  be  and  as  to  why  it  should  be. 


The  isthmus  has  four  hundred  years  stood  in  the  way  of 
what  men  wanted  to  accompHsh.  Cohunbus  started  to  reach 
ihe  Orient ;  he  might  have  got  there,  but  the  isthmus  was  in  the 
way.  After  a  lapse  of  more  than  four  hundred  years  the 
Oregon,  a  great  battleship,  tried  to  go  from  the  Pacific,  where 
she  was  built,  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  the  isthmus  stood  in 
the  way.  Those  four  hundred  years  from  the  voyage  of  Colum- 
bus to  the  voyage  of  the  Oregon  have  witnessed  very  remarkable 
changes  in  the  operations  which  the  isthmus  impeded. 

First,  in  the  matter  of  commerce ;  Columbus  tried  to  reach 
Asia ;  it  was  the  Asiatic  commerce,  the  Asiatic  trade  which  was 
before  him,  and  that  was  the  one  thing  that  he  thought  of.  For 
three  hundred  and  fifty  years  the  trade  of  the  far  East  was  the 
principal  trade  which  sought  to  cross  the  isthmus.  Then  came 
an  entirely  different  condition ;  it  was  the  development  of  our 
Pacific  coast;  suddenly  the  trade  of  California  arose,  and  that 
was  the  important  thing  which  had  to  cross  the  isthmus.  Finally 
the  railroads  across  the  continent  are  handling  the  California 
business,  and  the  question  of  the  extreme  East  has  come  up 
again ;  it  is  the  trade  of  the  Orient  combined  with  the  other  con- 
ditions of  the  Pacific  which  now  make  the  demand  for  the 
Isthmian  Canal. 

During  these  periods  enormous  changes  have  taken  place  in 
the  class  of  ships  which  need  to  cross  the  isthmus.  Columbus 
came  in  his  caravels  ;  and  in  the  early  days  the  same  class  of  ship, 
I  presume,  in  which  he  crossed  the  ocean,  used  to  sail  from  ports 
in  Spain  across  the  Atlantic,  through  the  Caribbean,  up  the  San 
Juan  Rive-,  across  Lake  Nicaragua,  and  landed  their  cargoes 
at  the  City  of  Granada.  In  the  next  period,  the  period  of  Cali- 
fornia activity,  business  was  handled  in  side-wheel  steamers; 
steamers  seldom  more  than  two  hundred  and  fifty  feet  long,  none 
of  them  drawing  more  than  seventeen  or  eighteen  feet,  crowded 
with  passengers,  carying  practically  no  freight ;  and  these  ships 
were  the  ones  on  which  the  earlier  isthmian  canal  projects 
were  based.     And  now  we  have  come  to  ships  compared  to 


which  these  CaHfornia  steamers  are  insignificant;  ships  not  of 
2,000,  but  of  20,000  tons ;  ships  seven  hundred  feet  long,  drawing 
thirty-two  feet,  with  seventy  or  seventy-five  feet  beam.  Those 
are  the  ships  which  any  modern  canal  must  be  built  to  accom- 
modate; ships  that  cannot  go  through  the  Suez  Canal.  The 
largest  ships  now  sailing  from  English  ports  to  Australia  neces- 
sarily go  around  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  because  the  Suez  Canal 
is  not  big  enough. 

In  anor.her  respect  there  has  been  a  tremendous  and  radical 
change.     All  the  early  history  of  the  isthmus  was  based  on  the 
Spanish    occupation;    and    the    Spanish    occupation,    like    all 
mediaeval  work,  was  an  occupation  which  utterly  disregarded 
sanitation.     In  every  Spanish  city,  I  presume  in  Spain,  and  cer- 
tainly in  all   Spanish-America,  no  attempt  whatever  has  been 
made  either  to  provide  good  water  or  to  provide  a  proper  sew- 
erage system.     All  the  development  has  been  one  which  tended 
to  preserve  the  diseases  of  centuries  for  the  benefit  of  posterity. 
The  Panama  railroad  was  built  fifty  years  ago,  in  a  country 
already  occupied  on  the  Spanish  principle,  at  a  time  when  little 
was  known  about  sanitary  rules,  and  at  a  time  when  the  isthmus 
was  crowded  by  the  same  class  of  population  in  transit  to  Cali- 
fornia, which,  in  later  years  made  the  towns  on  the  plains  such 
that  they  were  designated  as  "hell  on  wheels."     This  was  the 
kind  of  people  that  covered  the  isthmus  when  the  Panama  rail- 
road  was   built,   and   it   was   under   those   conditions   that   the 
isthmus  obtained  the  name  of  being  the  most  unhealthy  place  in 
the  world.     Then  followed  the  construction  of  the  Panama  Canal 
by  the  French  company;  a  company  which  started  out  with  a 
magnificent  abandon  which  has  hardly  ever  been  equalled,  which 
started  to  spend  money  as  if  there  were  no  end  to  it,  and  to  im- 
port into  u  tropical  country  the  luxuries  and  dangers  of  the 
French  merropolis.     It  resulted,  as  was  to  be  expected,  in  a  dis- 
aster, in  every  way  you  can  think  of ;  financial,  physical,  moral, 
sanitary ;  and  that  perpetuated  the  bad  name  of  the  Isthmus  of 
Panama.     The  final  sanitary  development  is  one  of  which  this 


country  may  well  be  proud ;  and  that  is  the  work  which  the 
American  army  has  done  in  Cuba  under  the  rule  which  termi- 
nates to-day.  Cuba  is  naturally  a  Healthy  island,  but  its  cities 
have  all  the  troubles  of  the  Spanish  occupation ;  exactly  the  same 
thing  existed  in  Havana  which  exists  in  Panama;  and  it  has 
been  thoroughly  proved  that  the  tropical  diseases  which  have 
made  Cuba  a  terror,  are  diseases  which  can  be  absolutely  con- 
trolled ;  this,  I  believe,  will  be  the  case  in  the  City  of  Panama, 
as  much  as  it  was  in  Santiago,  when  the  same  control  and  the 
same  management  is  placed  there. 

And  now  there  is  one  other  development,  in  thought  at  least, 
which  has  come  about  within  the  last  two  weeks.  The  isthmus 
has  been  considered  throughout  its  length  not  only  a  seat  of 
tropical  disease,  but  a  seat  of  natural  disturbance.  It  is  all  an 
earthquake  country.  Nicaragua  is  an  earthquake  country, 
Panama  is  an  earthquake  country,  and  the  earthquakes  extend 
well  over  !nto  Central  America,  Colombia  and  Venezuela.  The 
effect  of  earthquakes  on  a  canal  has  been  more  or  less  spoken  of. 
The  only  conclusion  that  I  have  been  able  to  reach  is  that  an 
earthquake  will  not  injure  a  canal  seriously.  A  canal  is  the 
character  of  structure  on  which  earthquakes  would  have  least 
effect.  It  is  in  the  earth ;  not  raised  above  it.  Its  masonry  is  all 
low,  heavy,  massive.  There  are  no  floors  to  be  dropped  out  by, 
spreading  walls.  And  even  though  earthquakes  were  compara- 
tively frequent,  I  do  not  believe  the  effect  of  those  earthquakes 
en  canal  structures  would  be  sufficiently  great  to  be  taken  into 
consideration  in  selecting  a  canal  route.  I  believe  myself  that 
the  danger  of  earthquakes  is  three  times  as  much  at  Nicaragua 
as  at  Panama ;  but  as  three  times  nothing  differs  but  little  from 
once  nothing  it  does  not  bear  any  important  part  in  this  con- 
nection. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  another  natural  disturbance 
which  since  I  visited  the  Isthmus  I  have  believed  to  be  a  real 
danger  and  that  is,  the  danger  of  the  canal  being  filled  up  by 
volcanic  eruptions.     This  is  a  thing  which  we  have  heard  so  little 


of  for  nearly  twenty  centuries,  that  people  have  been  accustomed 
to  set  it  aside  as  a  matter  of  no  importance ;  but  the  recent  dis- 
turbance at  Martinique  has  made  volcanic  eruptions,  and  especi- 
ally deposits  of  lava  and  cinders,  more  prominent  in  everybody's 
mind  than  they  have  been  for  2,000  years ;  and  this  I  fully  be- 
lieve is  a  real  danger.  No  country  is  fuller  of  volcanoes  than 
the  border  between  Costa  Rica  and  Nicaragua,  exactly  where  the 
Nicaragua  Canal  is  located.  I  do  not  believe  that  in  the  whole 
world  there  exists  a  location  in  which  a  repetition  of  the  Mar- 
tinique disaster  is  more  probable  than  directly  on  Lake 
Nicaragua. 

Before  entering  into  the  features  of  the  canals  themselves,  I 
want  to  refer  to  the  general  character  of  the  world.  I  presume 
there  is  no  one  here  who  will  dispute  the  fact  that  the  earth  is  a 
sphere.  I  doubt  whether  there  are  many  here  who  have  ever 
thoroughly  realized  what  this  means,  what  the  real  character  of 
a  sphere  is.  We  think  of  the  globe  with  its  North  pole  up,  its 
South  pole  down,  and  we  looking  at  the  equator;  and  yet  there 
is  no  more  reason  for  looking  at  a  globe  from  this  direction  than 
from  any  other.  A  globe  appears  very  differently,  so  far  as  the 
arrangement  of  land  and  seas  is  concerned,  according  to  the 
direction  in  which  you  look  at  it.  The  shortest  line  of  travel 
on  the  globe  is  a  great  circle  curve ;  and  if  you  look  at  that 
great  circle  curve  from  a  point  in  the  plane  of  that  curve,  what- 
ever way  that  curve  be  drawn,  it  looks  like  a  straight  line. 

There  are  many  ideas  which  we  get  from  maps  which  we 
find  to  be  absolutely  wrong  when  we  study  the  globe.  We  are 
accustomed  to  think  that  if  we  travel  west  we  take  the  shortest 
line  to  go  to  a  point  which  is  directly  west  of  us.  This  is  true 
only  on  the  equator.  We  are  accustomed  to  think  that  the 
Sandwich  Islands  are  somewhere  near  a  line  from  San  Francisco 
to  Japan ;  and  yet,  if  you  want  to  find  a  midway  station  between 
San  Francisco  and  Japan,  you  must  not  go  south  to  the  Sand- 
wich Islands,  but  away  up  north  to  the  Aleutian  Islands,  and 
there  you  will  find  it.     We  think  that  the  nearest  points  in 


America  to  Australia  and  New  Zealand,  which  are  south  of  the 
Equator,  must  be  pretty  well  south,  and  yet  San  Francisco  is 
nearer  to  Australia  than  any  point  in  North  America  until  you 
get  almost  to  Patagonia.  There  are  many  of  these  things  which 
have  given  entirely  false  ideas  because  we  have  been  brought  up 
on  maps,  and  as  an  illustration  of  this  I  shall  show  you  a  few 
views  of  the  globe. 

The  following  views  were  then  exhibited  on  the  screen : 

1.  View  of  the  globe  taken  from  a  point  in  space  above 

the  North  Pole,  the  meridian  of  Greenwich  being 
indicated  by  a  full  black  line  and  the  i8oth  meridian 
by  a  broken  black  line.  An  arrow  points  to  the 
Mississippi  River,  which  is  in  longitude  90°  west, 
another  arrow  to  the  mouth  of  the  Ganges  River  in 
longitude  90°  east,  and  exactly  opposite  the  Missis- 
sippi River,  a  third  arrow  points  to  the  Panama  Canal 
and  a  fourth  arrow  to  the  Suez  Canal.  This  view 
shows  that  to  go  from  European  ports  to  India  a 
vessel  must  pass  through  three  times  as  much  longi- 
tude if  she  takes  the  Panama  route  as  if  she  takes  the 
Suez  route,  showing  that  the  Panama  Canal  will  be 
for  the  Asiatic  trade  of  America  and  not  for  that  of 
Europe. 

2.  View  of  the  globe  showing  a  curve  of  uniform  dis- 

tance, 5,830  miles  from  Wellington,  N.  Z.,  which 
passes  90  miles  from  San  Francisco  and  strikes  the 
west  coast  of  South  America  in  latitude  5  degrees 
south. 

3.  View  of  the  globe  showing  a  curve  of  uniform  dis- 

tance, 6,500  miles  from  Sidney,  N.  S.  W.,  which 
passes  close  to  San  Francisco  and  strikes  the  west 
coast  of  South  America  in  latitude  25  degrees  30 
minutes  south. 

4.  View  of  the  globe  showing  a  great  circle  curve  tangent 

to  Southern  California  and  passing  through  Yoko- 
hama, this  indicating  the  shortest  possible  course 
which  any  vessel  passing  through  the  Panama  Canal 
could  take  to  reach  Japan. 


5-  View  of  the  globe  showing  a  great  circle  curve  con- 
necting San  Francisco  and  Yokohama. 

6.  View  of  the  globe  showing  a  great  circle  curve  con- 
necting Panama  and  San  Francisco,  this  curve  pass- 
ing through  Yucatan,  crossing  the  Gulf  of  Mexico 
and  the  remainder  of  it  being  on  land. 

The  American  Isthmus  properly  extends  from  South 
America  through  to  Southern  Mexico.  It  is  about  fifteen  hun- 
dred miles  long.  There  are  on  this  Isthmus  but  three  general 
locations  at  which  a  passage  of  the  Isthmus  is  practicable. 

The  first  of  these,  starting  from  the  south,  is  in  the  curve 
that  surrounds  Panama  Bay.  Around  that  bay  the  Isthmus  is 
exceptionally    narrow,    and    three    different    routes    have    been  V 

selected  there  as  lines  for  canals. 

The  second  place  where  a  passage  is  possible  is  at  Lake 
Nicaragua. 

The  third  attractive  point  has  been  the  Isthmus  of  Tehuante- 
pec,  west  of  Yucatan. 

On  the  curve  around  Panama  Bay  three  canal  routes  have 
been  proposed,  and  each  of  them  is  subject  to  several  variants. 
The  most  easterly  of  these  is  that  commonly  called  the  Darien 
route,  or  the  Caledonia  Bay  route,  which  starts  from  the  point 
where  William  Paterson  two  hundred  years  ago  founded  his 
town  of  New  Edinburgh,  expecting  to  establish  there  a  city, 
which,  controlling  the  transit  of  the  Isthmus,  would  become  the 
metropolis  of  the  Western  world ;  a  city  which  lasted  but  a  year. 
It  was  deserted  after  the  most  extreme  tribulations,  and  to-day 
it  has  absolutely  disappeared.  There  is  not  a  white  settlement 
on  the  coast  within  seventy-five  miles  of  it  in  either  direction. 
I  have  myself  visited  the  site  of  New  Edinburgh,  and  it  was  an 
absolute  wilderness,  in  which  I  thought  I  could  trace  the  old 
ditch  or  canal  which  was  dug  as  a  protection  from  Spanish  and 
Indian  invasion,  but  which  was  hardly  distinguishable  from  any 
other  lagoon.     It  is  on  a  beautiful  harbor;  and  seen  from  the 


8 

sea  there  is  a  gap  in  the  mountains  which  looks  as  if  it  was  an 
ideal  passage ;  but  that  gap  is  six  hundred  feet  high ;  and 
although  a  tunnel  route  could  be  found  there,  nothing  else  is 
practicable.  The  next  line  is  what  is  known  as  the  San  Bias 
route.  That  is  undoubtedly  the  shortest  passage  between  the  two 
oceans ;  but  the  summit  here  is  over  a  thousand  feet  high.  The 
harbors  are  good  at  both  ends,  and  if  it  were  not  for  the  moun- 
tain it  would  be  the  best  route ;  but  it  involves  a  tunnel  four  and 
a  half  miles  long ;  and  such  a  tunnel  built  to  pass  a  modern  ship 
is  a  work  which  even  a  modern  engineer  would  hesitate  to  under- 
take. The  third  of  the  routes  which  terminate  on  Panama  Bay, 
is  the  well-known  Panama  route.  This  is  the  only  possible 
route  of  the  three  with  a  low  summit;  the  summit  on  the  line 
of  the  Panama  Railroad  being  only  two  hundred  and  eighty-five 
feet  above  the  sea.  It  is  the  lowest  summit  that  exists  any 
where  except  at  Nicaragua. 

The  second  location  is  the  Nicaragua  location,  and  on  the 
Nicaragua  location  the  lowest  summit  any  where  on  the  conti- 
nent seems  to  be  found.  It  is  but  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet 
above  the  sea. 

The  third  location,  Tehuantepec,  is  impracticable  for  a 
V  canal.  The  summit  is  about  seven  hundred  feet  high ;  it  is  too 
broad  a  summit  to  tunnel.  Although  the  best  line  for  the  ship 
railroad  which  Captain  Eads  proposed  to  build,  it  is  not  suitable 
for  any  other  method  of  isthmian  transit.  Captain  Eads  was  a 
man  of  extraordinary  ability;  if  he  had  lived  indefinitely,  I  do 
not  feel  at  all  sure  but  what  he  would  have  built  his  ship  rail- 
road. On  the  other  hand,  I  feel  that  it  is  a  very  fortunate  thing 
that  he  did  not  build  it ;  if  a  railroad  of  that  kind  had  been  built, 
even  if  constructionally  successful,  it  would  already  be  inadequate 
to  do  the  work  it  was  intended  to  perform. 

Of  the  different  routes,  there  are  but  three  that  it  is  worth 
while  to  say  anything  about ;  the  San  Bias,  the  Panama  and  the 
Nicaragua.  The  San  Bias  route  has  lately  been  brought  into 
prominence  because  statements  have  been  made  public  that  the 


/ 


mountain  was  of  solid  granite ;  that  it  could  easily  be  tunneled, 
and  that  the  canal  could  be  built  on  an  absolutely  straight  line. 
There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  there  is  a  particle  of  granite 
any  where  on  this  route.  The  statements  that  the  mountain  is 
of  granite  are  derived  from  old  note  books,  about  fifty  years  old, 
in  which  pencil  notes  designate  the  surface  rock  as  granite.  The 
engineers  employed  by  the  Commission,  who  traveled  over  all 
the  country  and  traced  the  summit,  were  unable  to  find  any 
granite,  and  I  know  no  one  who  has  ever  seen  any  granite  any- 
where on  the  Isthmus.  Furthermore,  there  is  no  reason  to  sup- 
pose that  it  would  be  possible  to  find  anything  approaching  a 
straight  line.  A  tunnel  four  and  a  half  miles  long,  when  a 
possible  route  exists  one  hundred  miles  away  without  a  tunnel, 
is  fatal  to  the  scheme. 

The  Panama  route  deserves  more  consideration.  At  Pan- 
ama the  distance  from  ocean  to  ocean  on  a  straight  line  is  only 
>^^^about  thirty-five  miles.  The  distance  from  tide  water  to  tide 
water  is  a  little  over  forty.  The  distance  from  the  six-fathom 
water  in  the  Atlantic  to  the  six-fathom  water  in  the  Pacific, 
according  to  the  location  made  by  the  French  Canal  Company, 
which  has  been  followed  by  the  Isthmian  Canal  Commission  on 
its  surveys,  is  about  forty-nine  miles,  which  can  probably  be 
slightly  shortened.  Of  this,  two-thirds  lie  in  the  low  country 
back  of  Colon,  and  in  the  valley  of  Chagres.  The  other  one- 
third  crosses  the  low  Cordilleras  and  lies  in  the  marshes  back 
of  Panama. 

The  original  French  scheme  contemplated  a  canal  without 
locks,  involving  a  cut  at  the  summit  nearly  four  hundred  feet 
deep,  as  the  canal  with  its  easier  curves  cannot  take  advantage 
of  the  extremely  low  point  which  the  railroad  followed,  and  the 
cut  would  be  from  the  highest  level  at  one  side  to  the  bottom 
of  the  canal.  That  such  a  canal  is  practicable,  I  have  not  the 
slightest  doubt ;  but  it  is  complicated  not  merely  by  the  amount 
of  excavation  necessary ;  but  by  the  control  of  the  floods  of  the 
Chagres  River,  which  at  times  exceed  one  hundred  thousand 


U-^ 


io 

cubic  feet  per  second,  and  by  the  fact  that  there  is  a  twenty-foot 
tide  on  the  Pacific  and  a  one-foot  tide  on  the  Atlantic.  The 
floods  of  the  Chagres  could  be  taken  care  of  by  making  a  canal 
for  two-thirds  its  length  big  enough  to  carry  them  off  without 
injury.  I  see  no  other  way.  I  do  not  think  any  diversion 
channel  practicable;  the  canal  itself  is  in  the  lowest  part  of  the 
valley;  a  diversion  channel  would  have  to  be  put  on  higher 
ground.  The  tidal  range  on  the  Pacific  means  that  a  tide  level 
canal  must  have  a  lock,  it  would  be  a  tide  lock  with  gates  opening 
both  ways,  and  that  there  would  be  times  when  both  gates  could 
be  left  open ;  but  it  is  a  limit  to  the  capacity  of  a  canal,  much  like 
the  limit  produced  by  any  other  lock.  The  cost  of  such  a  canal 
would  be  about  one  hundred  million  dollars  more  than  a  canal 
with  a  summit  level  and  with  locks.  If  this  were  the  whole 
story,  I  believe  that  a  tide  level  canal  at  Panama  would  be  the 
best  possible  solution  of  the  isthmian  transit  question ;  but  prac- 
tically all  the  work  on  the  tide  level  canal  would  be  excavation, 
and  concentrated  excavation  which  it  would  take  a  maximum 
time  to  remove.  I  believe  it  would  take  at  least  twenty-five  years 
to  build  a  proper  tide  level  canal,  and  this  seems  to  me  to  be 
absolutely  fatal  to  the  scheme.  We  cannot  wait  so  long.  We 
can  afford  to  pay  the  money,  but  we  cannot  afford  to  wait  these 
fifteen  years  without  getting  any  returns. 

Before  the  failure  of  the  old  company,  which  started  work 
in  its  reckless  way  at  Panama,  the  tide  level  scheme  had  been 
temporarily  abandoned.  They  had  begun  the  work  of  construct- 
ing locks ;  and  it  was  probably  a  temporary  abandonment  which 
would  have  been  measured  by  centuries  rather  than  by  years. 
Various  plans  have  been  made  by  different  commissions  for  a 
canal  with  locks.  Different  heights  of  summit  levels  have  been 
proposed.  The  plan  adopted  by  the  Isthmian  Canal  Commission 
proposes  to  build  a  dam  across  the  Chagres  about  fifteen  miles 
from  Colon,  about  one-third  of  the  distance  across  the  isthmus, 
and  to  convert  the  Chagres  above  the  dam  into  a  lake,  while 
below  the  dam  the  Chagres  would  be  carried  to  sea  by  a  route 


II 

safely  away  from  the  canal.  Leaving  the  lake,  known  as  Lake 
Bohio,  the  canal  would  cut  through  the  range  at  Culebra  cut, 
and  then  descend  by  three  locks  to  the  Pacific. 

To  describe  it  briefly,  a  ship  entering  the  canal  would  travel 
fifteen  miles  in  a  tide  level  canal,  then  ascend  by  two  locks  of 
great  lift  to  the  summit  level  of  Lake  Bohio,  which  would  be 
from  eighty-five  to  ninety  feet  above  tide  water,  the  normal  level 
being  eighty-five.  It  would  travel  through  this  artificial  lake 
for  fifteen  miles ;  then  leaving  the  lake,  pass  through  the  great 
Culebra  cut,  a  total  distance  of  about  seven  miles,  then  by  two 
locks  descend  almost  to  the  Pacific  level,  and  a  mile  beyond  by 
one  lock,  or  lift  varying  with  the  tide,  pass  down  to  the  level  of 
ihe  Pacific  and  so  out  to  sea. 

Lake  Bohio,  an  enlargement  of  the  Chagres,  would  be  of 
such  dimensions  that  no  flood  ever  known  of  the  Chagres  would 
create  a  disturbing  current.  This  lake  would  discharge  over  a 
spillway  two  miles  away  from  the  canal;  and  the  spillway, 
which  would  be  founded  on  rock,  would  be  of  such  dimensions 
that  the  regulation  of  the  lake  would  be  absolutely  automatic. 
As  the  summit  level  is  placed  eighty-five  feet  higher  than  that 
of  the  tide  level  canal,  the  depth  of  the  great  cut  is  eighty-five 
feet  less,  and  the  quantity  of  excavation  on  this  line  is  reduced  to 
Ebout  three-eighths  of  what  it  is  on  the  tide  level  canal. 

For  nine  months  of  the  year  the  Chagres  River  alone  supplies 
ample  water  for  all  the  demands  of  the  canal ;  for  three  months 
the  suppl}-  may  be  inadequate ;  but  the  lake  formed  by  damming 
the  Chagres  supplies  a  reservoir  which  meets  these  conditions; 
and  in  the  worst  year  of  which  we  have  any  record  the  level  of 
that  lake  would  be  lowerd  by  all  the  demands  of  the  canal,  less 
than  three  feet. 

The  pr.ncipal  works  on  the  canal  are  the  locks,  the  spillway, 
the  dam  at  Bohio,  and  the  excavation.  The  one  work  which  con- 
trols the  time  of  execution  is  the  Culebra  cut. 

The  time  required  to  pass  through  this  canal  would  probably 
be  about  twelve  hours.     In  other  words,  a  ship  entering  it  in  the 


12 


morning  could  go  out  into  the  other  ocean  in  the  evening.  No 
night  transit  would  be  necessary. 

The  situation  at  Nicaragua  is  very  different.  Lake  Nica- 
ragua drams  in  the  Caribbean  Sea;  and  Lake  Nicaragua  at  the 
nearest  point  is  only  twelve  miles  from  the  Pacific.  In  early 
days,  as  I  have  already  said,  ships  sailed  from  ports  in  Spain, 
went  up  the  San  Juan  River  to  Lake  Nicaragua,  crossed  Lake 
Nicaragua  to  the  city  of  Granada,  discharged  their  cargoes,  and 
came  home.  Although  it  is  reported  that  the  last  ship  that  ever 
made  that  voyage  never  came  home,  that  an  earthquake,  or  some- 
thing or  other,  disturbed  the  rocks  somewhere  in  the  San  Juan 
River,  and  she  could  not  get  out;  there  is  no  doubt  that  those 
voyages  were  made. 

In  the  early  fifties  a  route  to  California  was  opened  by  way 
of  Nicaragua.  The  Transit  Company  ran  steamers  from  New 
York  to  Greytown,  and  from  San  Juan  del  Sur  to  San  Francisco, 
and  made  quicker  time  than  the  steamers  that  went  by  way  of 
Panama.  A  steamer  sailing  from  New  York  entered  an  excel- 
lent harbor  at  Greytown;  the  passengers  there  were  transferred 
lo  a  river  boat  which  went  up  the  San  Juan  River  about  seventy- 
five  miles  to  Castillo,  where  there  was  a  rapid ;  they  had  to  walk 
about  a  half  a  mile  around  the  Castillo  rapids,  where  they  took 
another  boat,  which  could  take  them  up  the  other  twenty-five 
miles  of  the  San  Juan  to  Lake  Nicaragua  and  the  seventy  miles 
across  Lake  Nicaragua  to  the  west  side  of  the  lake.  There  a 
good  stage  road  fifteen  miles  long,  which  they  could  go  over  in 
three  hours,  took  them  to  San  Juan  del  Sur,  where  a  steamer 
was  waiting  to  take  them  to  San  Francisco. 

To  the  layman  it  seemed  as  if  it  required  little  work  to  make 
a  canal  transit  line ;  it  was  only  necessary  to  improve  the  San 
Juan  River  so  that  ocean  vessels  could  go  up  it,  and  to  construct 
fifteen  miles  of  canal  between  the  lake  and  the  Pacific.  I  think 
it  was  this  feeling,  the  crude  impressions  which  made  Lake 
Nicaragua  seem  like  an  extension  of  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  that 
made  the  Nicaragua  route  as  popular  as  it  has  been.     But  there 


13 

are  two  things  which  the  layman  did  not  see.  The  first  is  that  the 
San  Juan  River  is  about  one  hundred  miles  long  and  one  hun- 
dred feet  higher  at  one  end  than  the  other;  no  river  can  fall  a 
foot  to  the  mile  for  one  hundred  miles  without  obstruction,  the 
removal  of  which  will  let  the  whole  river  run  away.  The  next 
feature  is  that  half  way  between  Lake  Nicaragua  and  the  sea  the 
San  Carlos  River,  of  about  equal  size,  enters  the  San  Juan  River 
and  brings  down  immense  quantities  of  sand ;  it  has  no  settling 
basin  like  Lake  Nicaragua ;  and  while  on  the  upper  half  of  the 
San  Juan  River  the  great  fall  is  maintained  by  rocky  reefs,  on 
the  lower  half  it  is  maintained  by  sand  bars.  One  effect  of 
those  sand  bars  has  been  verv  marked,  the  fine  harbor  of  fiftv 
years  ago  at  Greytown  has  absolutely  disappeared,  and  in  the 
place  where  the  Transit  Line  steamers  formerly  anchored  reed<^ 
are  now  growing  in  water  three  feet  deep. 

A  curious  feature  of  the  Nicaragua  route  is  that  the  difficulties 
all  come  not  in  passing  across  the  continental  divide,  but  in 
passing  from  Lake  Nicaragua  to  the  ocean  into  which  Lake 
Nicaragua  drains.  The  San  Juan  River,  which  is  the  natural 
route  for  boats  now,  is  the  obstacle  in  the  way  of  building  a 
canal.  The  passage  from  the  canal  to  the  Pacific  is  remarkable. 
The  summit  is  only  about  fifty  feet  above  the  canal.  Barring 
danger  from  volcanoes  no  better  line  could  be  asked  for  a  canal 
than  that  between  the  lake  and  the  Pacific,  across  the  continental 
divide.  The  whole  difficulty  comes  in  the  swamp  country  be- 
tween the  sea  and  the  San  Juan  River,  where  the  river  below  the 
San  Carlos  is  obstructed  by  sand  bars  which  cannot  be  re- 
moved. 

Three  different  general  plans  have  been  proposed  for  a  canal 
at  Nicaragua.  So  far  as  the  west  end  is  concerned  they  might 
all  be  called  practically  identical,  though  one  of  them  involved 
a  dam  founded  on  sand,  which  was  not  necessary,  and  which 
would  be  impracticable. 

The  first  careful  surveys  were  made  by  Colonel  Childs  in  the 
early  fifties.     He  made  his  estimates  for  the  class  of  side-wheel 


14 

steamers  which  then  were  in  the  California  trade.  He  proposed 
what  was  virtually  a  system  of  slack  water  navigation,  with  a 
number  of  dams  and  locks  of  low  lift  until  he  got  down  into  the 
plain,  and  then  he  left  the  San  Juan  River  and  came  across  to 
Grey  town. 

The  next  plan  was  that  of  the  Maritime  Canal  Company, 
prepared  by  Mr.  Menocal ;  and  this  plan  was  really  the  first  con- 
fession of  the  impracticability  of  the  San  Juan  River  route,  the 
first  confession  that  what  appeared  to  be  a  favoritism  of  nature 
was  really  the  greatest  obstruction.  He  proposed  to  dam  the 
San  Juan  River  below  the  mouth  of  the  San  Carlos,  building  a 
dam  of  such  height  that  the  level  of  Lake  Nicaragua  would  be 
extended  to  it ;  in  other  words,  that  Lake  Nicaragua  would  be 
lengthened  fifty  miles.  He  also  planned  to  extend  the  level  of 
the  lake  out  between  two  ranges  of  hills  until  he  carried  it 
within  eight  miles  of  the  Caribbean  Sea,  from  which  he  was 
going  to  lock  down  to  the  sea.  It  was  a  very  beautiful  scheme, 
but  there  were  two  or  three  serious  defects.  His  dam  was  below 
the  San  Carlos,  so  that  he  would  not  escape  the  sand  of  the  San 
Carlos,  and  no  foundation  was  found  for  the  dam.  Further  sur- 
veys showed  that  only  one  of  the  two  ranges  of  hills  between  which 
the  lake  was  to  be  extended  towards  the  Atlantic,  existed.  One 
supposed  range  was  only  a  series  of  isolated  hills,  and  the  lake 
would  have  to  be  sustamed  by  a  series  of  embankments  about 
twelve  miK^s  long  in  all,  and  some  of  which  had  a  height  of 
nearly  ninety  feet.  It  was  a  scheme  which  I  think  no  conserva- 
tive engineer  would  ever  dare  to  attempt. 

The  final  plan  adopted  by  the  Isthmian  Commission  con- 
templates a  dam  some  little  distance  above  the  mouth  of  the  San 
Carlos,  founded  entirely  on  rock,  to  be  built  of  masonry,  and 
the  construction  of  a  canal  from  Greytown  harbor  to  connect 
with  the  San  Juan  River  above  this  dam.  This  would  be  a  canal 
for  its  entire  length,  using  no  portion  of  the  San  Juan  River, 
and  it  would  be  of  about  the  same  length  as  the  whole  Panama 
Canal.     It  would  have  four  locks,  and  be  constructed  for  prac- 


15 

tically  its  entire  length  through  a  swamp,  and  through  the 
wildest  swamp  I  ever  saw.  It  is  a  tropical  swamp  in  a  country 
with  an  average  rainfall  of  from  two  hundred  to  two  hundred 
and  forty  inches  a  year.  It  is  this  feature  which  has  been 
spoken  of,  admired,  and  criticized.  It  is  said  to  be  in  a  healthy 
countr}-,  but  it  is  a  country  in  which  nobody  lives.  They  say 
there  that  it  is  perfectly  healthy  to  be  wet;  that  it  is  very  un- 
healthy to  be  occasionally  wet  and  then  dry ;  and  that  there  is  no 
occasion  for  ever  getting  dry  there.  It  is  a  country  which  has 
no  roads ;  you  can  only  go  about  in  boats ;  and  it  remains  to  be 
seen  what  its  sanitary  condition  would  be  when  a  large  force  of 
laborers  was  placed  there,  and  the  earth  excavated  and  exposed 
to  the  sun,  where  it  would  have  the  opportunity  of  having  the 
sun  shine  on  it  and  then  be  rained  on  perhaps  six  times  a  day; 
perhaps  it  would  not  breed  the  malaria  which  people  would 
generally  expect ;  but  the  soil  of  a  tropical  swamp  is  not  a  thing 
to  be  handled  generally  with  impunity. 

With  this  canal  completed,  artificial  harbors  must  be  made 
at  both  ends.  There  is  no  harbor  at  either  end  of  the  Nicaragua 
Canal  now.  A  ship  entering  the  canal  at  Greytown  would  take 
about  twelve  hours  to  go  through  the  section  of  canal  between 
Greytown  and  the  San  Juan  River.  The  San  Juan  River  is  a 
stream  apparently  as  big  as  the  Mississippi  at  Dubuque ;  it  is  a 
crooked  river,  in  some  places  so  crooked  that  cutoffs  are  pro- 
posed in  the  form  of  canals.  A  ship  entering  the  canal  at  Grey- 
town in  the  morning  would  reach  the  San  Juan  River  in  the 
evening.  If  she  was  a  small  steamer  she  would  probably  go 
right  through  by  night ;  if  she  was  a  large  one  she  would  proba- 
bly wait  till  daylight,  and  then  follow  up  the  fifty  miles  of  river 
into  Lake  Nicaragua.  The  course  of  navigation  follows  for 
seventy  miles  through  Nicaragua ;  the  western  third  of  which  is 
a  dredged  <  luinncl,  the  remainder  deep  water;  and  from  there  a 
passage  of  seventeen  miles  with  four  locks  would  take  the  ship 
down  to  the  Pacific.  It  is  estimated  that  it  would  take  from 
thirty-three  to  thirty-six  hours  for  a  steamer  to  pass  from  Grey- 


i6 

town  to  the  Pacific,  running  all  the  time.  This  means,  if  she 
travels  night  and  day,  two  days  and  a  night ;  twenty-four  hours 
longer  than  at  Panama ;  if  she  travels  only  by  day,  it  means  three 
days  and  two  nights ;  forty-eight  hours  longer  than  at  Panama. 
The  Suez  Canal  is  operated  regularly  night  and  day  without 
delay.  The  Nicaragua  Canal  might  possibly  also  be  operated 
n  this  way ;  but  the  Suez  Canal  is  in  a  rainless  country  with  an 
exceedingly  clear  atmosphere;  the  Nicaragua  Canal  is  in  a 
country  of  excessive  rainfall,  with  a  good  deal  of  wind  and  more 
or  less  fog.  My  own  judgment  is  that  small  ships  would  go 
through  it  day  and  night ;  that  big  ships  would  run  only  by  day. 
The  following  views  were  then  exhibited  on  the  screen : 

7.  View  of  a  portion  of  the  globe  v/hich  includes  the 

United  States  and  the  northern  portion  of  South 
America  exhibiting  the  volcanic  regions  around  the 
Caribbean  Sea. 

8.  View  of  the  Isthmus   from  near  the  mouth  of  the 

Atrate  to  Lake  Nicaragua,  showing  the  Caledonia, 
San  Bias,  Panama  and  Nicaragua  routes. 

9.  Map  of  the  Panama  Canal,  being  a  reproduction  of 

that  prepared  by  the  Isthmian  Canal  Commission. 

10.  Map  of  the  Nicaragua  location,  being  a  reproduction 

of  that  prepared  by  the  Nicaragua  Canal  Commis- 
sion. 

11.  Comparative  profiles  of  the  Panama,   San  Bias  and 

Nicaragua  routes. 

12.  Profile  of  the  Panama  Canal,  being  a  reproduction  of 

that  prepared  by  the  Isthmian  Canal  Commission. 

13.  Cross-section  of  the  tunnel  proposed  for  San  Bias. 

14.  View  of  the  relief  map  prepared  by  the  New  French 

Panama  Canal  Company. 


17 

15.  Photographic  view  of  the  Bohio  Dam  site. 

16.  Photographic  view  of  the  excavation  for  the  Bohio 

locks. 

17.  Second  photographic  view  of  the  excavation  for  the 

Bohio  locks. 

18.  Map  of  Lake  Bohio. 

19.  Cross   sections   of   different   dams   proposed    for  the 

Bohio  site. 

To  make  a  comparison  between  the  different  canals  it  hardly 
seems  necessary  to  take  into  consideration  anything  but  Panama 
and  Nicaragua.  And  first  looking  at  it  in  the  matter  of  con- 
struction. At  Panama  there  are  passable  harbors  at  both  ends ; 
an  excellent  one  at  Panama,  although  it  is  technically  nothing 
but  a  protected  roadstead;  a  harbor  good  for  three  hundred 
and  sixty-three  days  of  the  year  on  an  average  at  Colon ;  but  it 
requires  a  deepening  of  about  five  feet  for  the  largest  class  of 
vessels,  to  correspond  to  the  thirty-five- foot  depth  of  canal  which 
the  Commission  has  proposed.  There  is  an  excellent  railroad 
across  the  Isthmus.     The  facilities  are  there  to  begin  with. 

At  Nicaragua  there  is  no  harbor  at  either  end,  although  art 
ocean  pier  could  probably  be  built  on  the  Pacific  end.  There  is 
no  railroad  on  the  line.  There  are  no  means  of  communication. 
There  is  practically  no  population.  Everything  must  be  made 
ready. 

The  cost  of  building  the  Nicaragua  Canal  was  estfmated  by 
the  Commission  at  about  forty-five  million  dollars  more  than  the 
cost  of  finishing  the  Panama.  My  own  judgment  is  that  this 
does  not  represent  the  real  relative  cost  of  the  two ;  but  that  in 
the  endeavor  to  give  each  side  an  absolutely  fair  show,  uniform 
prices  and  uniform  percentages  were  applied  to  both,  and  not 
sufficient  allowance  made  for  the  better  understood  conditions 
at  Panama,  and  that  in  reality  the  difference  in  cost  would  be 


i8 

likely  to  be  twice  as  great  as  these  estimates  indicate.  How- 
ever that  may  be,  that  is  the  cost  not  of  building  the  Panama 
Canal,  but  of  finishing  it ;  of  taking  it  where  it  is  and  com- 
pleting it. 

In  the  matter  of  time,  my  own  judgment  is  that  the  Nicar- 
agua Canal  will  take  two  years  longer  to  build,  perhaps  four, 
than  it  will  to  finish  the  Panama  Canal.  On  that  there  is 
difference  of  opinion. 

In  the  matter  of  sanitary  conditions,  I  would  myself  rather 
attempt  to  handle  the  diseases  and  the  relics  of  Spanish  occupa- 
tion which  exist  at  Panama,  to  handle  them  in  the  light  of  our 
experience  at  Cuba,  than  to  handle  the  swamps  of  Nicaragua. 
It  is,  perhaps,  infection  against  malaria.  Our  experience  in 
Cuba  has  been  with  infection.  We  have  not  yet  learned  how  to 
handle  swamps.  In  either  case  there  would  undoubtedly  be  a 
great  deal  of  sickness,  unless  extraordinary  methods  are  taken  to 
prevent  it,  but  I  do  not  believe  that  in  either  route  would  the 
necessity  of  sickness  be  as  great  as  in  some  of  our  swamp 
countries  on  both  sides  of  the  Mississippi  River. 

With  the  canal  completed,  the  two  may  be  compared  for  pur- 
poses of  operation.  The  Panama  Canal  is  less  than  fifty  miles 
long;  the  Nicaragua  about  one  hundred  and  ninety  including, 
in  round  numbers,  seventy  miles  of  canal,  fifty  miles  of  improved 
river  navigation,  and  seventy  miles  of  lake.  The  measure  of  the 
canals  though  is  the  time  required  to  pass  through.  The 
Panama  Canal  requires  twelve  hours;  the  Nicaragua  nearly 
thirty-six.  This,  however,  does  not  represent  the  whole  thing, 
as  for  all  trade  going  to  points  on  the  North  Pacific  coast  of 
North  America,  the  west  end  of  the  Nicaragua  Canal  is  five 
hundred  miles  nearer  than  Panama  is.  Five  hundred  miles 
represents  two  days  at  sea  for  an  ordinary  freight  steamer;  it 
lepresents  one  for  a  fast  passenger  steamer.  If  the  steamer  ran 
night  and  day  through  Nicaragua  Canal  it  could  probably  go 
from  New  York  to  San  Francisco  in  a  day  less  time  than  by  way 
of  Panama ;  if  it  laid  up  at  night,  there  would  be  no  saving  in 


19 

time ;  but  any  sea  captain  would  certainly  feel  more  comfortable 
if  his  ship  spent  one  day  land-locked  in  the  canal  than  if  he 
spent  two  or  three. 

The  next  matter  is  one  of  risk.  The  longer  a  canal  the 
greater  the  risk,  both  of  accident  and  of  delays.  The  risk  to  ships 
passing  through  the  long  canal  would  probably  be  more  than 
double  that  of  the  ships  passing  through  the  shorter  Panama 
Canal ;  there  being  little  risk,  however,  in  Lake  Nicaragua,  ex- 
cept from  volcanoes.  The  risk  of  delay  would  be  considerably 
greater,  probably  four  times  as  great  at  Nicaragua  as  at  Panama. 
The  other  form  of  risk  is  that  of  natural  disturbances ;  that  is, 
a  risk  of  winds,  of  earthquakes,  of  volcanoes.  There  is  much 
more  wind  at  Nicaragua  than  at  Panama.  This  is  claimed  to  be 
an  advantage  in  giving  superior  sanitary  conditions.  It  cer- 
tainly is  a  risk  in  navigating  large  vessels  through  narrow  chan- 
nels ;  and  there  is  much  more  curvature  on  the  San  Juan  River 
than  on  any  portion  of  the  Panama  Canal.  The  second  element 
of  risk  is  earthquakes ;  both  canals  are  in  an  earthquake  country, 
and  of  this  I  have  already  spoken.  The  third  is  that  of  vol- 
canoes, and  in  that  there  is  no  comparison  between  the  two ;  as 
I  have  already  said,  I  do  not  believe  there  is  any  place  in  the 
world  where  there  is  more  danger  of  volcanic  eruptions  than 
the  country  around  Lake  Nicaragua. 

In  the  matter  of  maintenance,  it  was  estimated  by  the  Com- 
mission, the  estimate  being  made  in  detail  by  calculating  the 
forces  required,  that  it  would  cost  about  $1,200,000  more  per  year 
to  maintain  and  police  the  Nicaragua  Canal  than  the  Panama. 

This  a  brief  comparison  between  the  two.  In  my  own  judg- 
ment there  is  no  doubt  as  to  which  line  should  be  selected.  At 
the  present  day,  in  the  light  of  what  has  occurred  in  the  West 
Indies,  to  build  the  Nicaragua  would  seem  like  a  blasphemous 
contempt  of  the  most  terrible  warning  which  nature  has  ever 
given  to  a  nation. 

There  is  another  reason.  Much  work  has  been  done  at 
Panama.     If  we  can  secure  what  has  been  done,  we  remove  the 


20 

temptation  for  some  one  else  to  linish  it.  Furthermore,  at 
Panama  the  French  company  have  offered  an  absolute  sale  of 
all  their  rights  there  of  every  kind.  Such  a  sale  would  give  no 
concession  under  which  our  government  could  build  a  canal. 
The  French  concession  is  very  burdensome  and  for  a  limited 
time;  but  a  purchase  of  all  these  rights  would  be  in  the  nature 
of  a  quit  i  laim  deed,  estopping  every  vested  right  which  now 
exists  there,  and  especially  all  present  interests  from  ever  claim- 
ing any  damages  if  rights  are  given  to  another.  Our  govern- 
ment would  be  perfectly  free  and  unhampered  by  anything  else, 
to  make  a  treaty  with  Colombia.  At  Nicaragua  this  is  hardly 
the  case.  The  Nicaragua  government  has  declared  all  franchises 
forfeited ;  the  parties  holding  those  franchises  do  not  accept  the 
declaration,  and  trouble  must  be  expected  from  them,  and  de- 
mands for  heavy  payments.  These  payments  would  be  to  our 
own  citizens,  and  undoubtedly  would  be  contended  for  and  ulti- 
mately made. 

There  is  a  political  consideration  which  is  important.  The 
route  across  the  Isthmus  of  Panama  is  very  short ;  it  is  in  a  sec- 
tion of  Colombia  far  away  from  the  main  portion  of  that  country, 
and  the  occupation  of  a  strip  of  land  here  would  be  very  much 
like  the  operation  of  the  Straits  of  Magellan,  or  any  boundary 
strait ;  the  Panama  Canal  would  become  the  recognized  boundary 
between  North  and  South  America,  and  could  be  used  and  oper- 
ated without  any  occasion  for  influencing  or  mixing  up  with  the 
adjoining  republics. 

The  line  through  Nicaragua,  practically  on  the  boundary  be- 
tween Nicaragua  and  Costa  Rica,  between  two  countries  which 
are  frequently  at  war,  nearly  two  hundred  miles  through  a 
foreign  country,  does  not  meet  those  conditions.  We  cannot 
build  and  occupy  and  maintain  a  canal  there  wihout  exercising 
influences  over  and  entering  into  complications  with  both  Costa 
Rica  and  Nicaragua  of  a  character  which  I  hope  we  shall  be 
able  to  avoid. 

I  have  taken  much  more  time  than  I  intended,  and  I  am 


21 


afraid  I  have  already  made  you  tired.     There  are  one  or  two 

little  remarks  with  which  I  will  close. 

There  are  three  demands   for  the  canal.     The  first  is  the 

matter  of  trade.  We  need  this  canal  to  enable  our  Pacific 
coast  to  reach  our  Atlantic  coast  and  the  ports  of  the  Atlantic 
Ocean  readily  and  cheaply.  We  need  it  to  reach  the  west  coast 
of  South  America,  a  country,  or  a  series  of  countries,  which 
furnish  what  we  want  and  take  what  we  make ;  a  district  whose 
trade  has  been  in  European  hands,  but  which  the  canal  will 
make  much  nearer  to  the  United  States  than  to  any  place 
across  the  Atlantic.  And  we  need  it  for  our  trade  with  the 
East ;  to  put  us  on  the  same  basis  in  the  East  through  the 
Panama  Canal  that  the  European  nations  are  by  using  the 
Suez  Canal.  I  look  for  no  trade  from  Europe  to  the  far  East 
going  through  the  American  Canal.  I  look  for  great  develop- 
ment in  American  trade. 

But  apart  from  trade,  we  need  it  for  two  other  reasons.  We 
need  it  as  a  military  nation.  Not  that  it  would  be  valuable  for 
vise  in  time  of  war,  for  its  use  could  be  stopped  by  whatever 
nation  had  the  strongest  fleet ;  but  military  work  is  done  in 
time  of  peace  more  than  in  time  of  war;  and  while  the  canal 
may  be  of  little  use  in  time  of  war,  it  would  be  of  very  great  use 
in  preventing  war.  The  possibility  of  our  bringing  our  fleet 
before  a  declaration  of  hostilities  from  one  ocean  to  the  other, 
would  be  worth  ten  times  as  much  as  the  ability  to  transfer  it 
during  a  period  of  hostilities. 

And  then  we  need  it  for  one  other  reason,  which  is  much 
more  important  than  both  of  these,  the  one  reason  which  really 
justifies  its  construction.  We  need  it  to  unify  our  whole 
country.  In  any  republic,  in  any  nation  in  which  the  people 
rule,  that  rule  and  government  can  be  successful  only  as  the 
interests  of  all  people  become  the  same.  The  construction  of 
this  canal,  which  will  make  our  Atlantic  ships  available  on  the 
Pacific,  which  will  make  our  coast  line  practically  continuous 
from  Eastport,  Maine,  to  the  most  westerly  point  of  Alaska,  which 


22 

will  enable  ports  on  both  sides  of  the  continent  to  trade  with 
those  on  the  other  side  of  the  continent,  will  do  more  than  any- 
thing else  to  unify  the  interests  of  our  country.  This  is,  really, 
the  strongest  argument  why  our  Government  should  build  the 
Panama  Canal. 


(8274) 


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